Leadership
At the core of leadership is the interaction between the leader and the follower. Much of leadership theory can be understood in terms of how leaders and followers interact and what the underlying assumptions are with respect to the roles and nature of leadership. Because of the many different types of leaders, and successful examples thereof, leadership scholarship has developed multiple branches that seek to explain leadership, but no one branch has yet proved definitive. Instead of understanding leadership through a single paradigm, and it better to understand it in terms of multiple paradigms, and different leadership theories can be applied to the same situation, and any given leader might apply multiple leadership styles at the same time.
Part of the appeal of leadership scholarship is that it encompasses so many unique academic disciplines. Leadership scholarship began life as in business schools but has been studied in the psychological and sociological contexts as well as the intercultural context, all of which lends breadth and depth to our understanding of leadership. This paper will synthesize the existing thought with regards to leadership, and seek to determine common relationships that are foundational to understanding what leadership is and how leadership works in the organizational context. Once these relationships are understood, it will be much easier for leaders to change outcomes by changing critical input elements or the underlying nature of relationships with a given organization.
Leadership Theories Overview
There are several different ongoing threads in current leadership scholarship. Avolio, Walumbwa and Weber (2009) outline several of these. They argue that authenticity is a critical component of leadership. Authentic leadership is a concept that can be applied to many otherwise disparate leadership styles, but authenticity is required by all. The theory of authentic leadership is that a good leader will exhibit a pattern of behavior "that encourages openness in sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting follower's inputs" (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009). The underlying logic is that freer flow of information and more openness with respect to decision-making is an essential component to getting the best ideas on the table, and therefore should result in long-run outperformance for the organization, as the aggregated effects of superior information flow and decision-making are realized.
This concept can be applied, however, to most modern forms of leadership. Consider the transactional-transformational axis, wherein a transactional leader is expert in maintaining systems and making incremental changes to improve organizational performance. The transformational leader is one who can guide an organization through a process of change, providing the vision and inspiration needed to overcome the barriers inherent in any change process (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009). This understanding perhaps shortchanges the transaction manager -- at least that is the impression one might get from reading pop literature on the subject. The reality is that authenticity is required in both cases, and that the transactional leader faces a difficult task in motivating charges to perform routine tasks well and to expend effort in the pursuit of incremental gains. Transactional leadership might actually be harder, but the underlying reality is that authenticity is a common thread for all leaders, and the transformational-transactional axis is primarily a differentiation of leadership style by task.
There are times when more than one leadership style is required. If we consider the transformational-transactional axis, and assume for a minute that there are two leaders at opposite extreme ends of the axis, an organization that needs to undergo radical change will surely need a transformational leader. However, if it needs to undergo this change while maintaining a high level of daily performance, there will also be a role for a transactional leader. This is the concept of shared leadership, which is a more open philosophy of leadership, but one that allows companies to leverage the comparative advantages of different people placed into leadership roles ("Shared Leadership," no date).
The concept of shared leadership is not entirely novel. It actually reflects one of the underlying realities of leadership -- in all but the smallest teams the leadership role is shared. There may only be one formal leader, but within the team there will be other leaders at various levels. They may derive their leadership from experiential authority, from their subject matter authority, or simply on the basis of the strength of their personality. Implementing shared leadership has become something of a challenge, in part because many practitioners see implementing shared leadership as necessarily formalizing an essentially informal...
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